So, make your choice: is Napolitano

A: Lying
B: That lax about knowing what's going on in the organization she's in charge of

I'm going with A. I have a hard time believing she would NOT know she had even one person taking part in an operation like this. We also know about the orders to use beanbags first, so this:
Grassley also wanted to know if Terry's team was under standing orders to use non-lethal force even against bandits clearly armed with assault rifles.

"I have asked that question, and my information is absolutely not," Napolitano said.
is bullshit. Note the 'my information is' crap, so she can later say "The information I had then was incorrect." So I believe.

Think I'll pass on the Land Rover...

everything leaked, things broke easily, it often had electrical fires, the steering was as useful in guiding the thing down the road as divining, and the noise the straight gears made obviated the need for any kind of radio. I have had more pleseant driving experiences bungee corded to the top of a bus in the rain.
...
...The momentary pleasure you’ll have in pride of ownership will be eclipsed the first time it strands you along the road, which will be on the way home from the dealership.

I like working on things, but when it comes to my transportation, unless I have something specifically to screw around with, I want the damn thing to work. All the time. Regular maintenance is one thing, having to carry a full set of tools and a shop manual so as to make sure you get where you're going, well, that just flat sucks.

The new TOW is nasty

Notice it detonates above the turret so it can strike down at the thinnest armor on the tank.

And they could do a live field test in Libya, just sneak some SpecOps people over the borders...


Found at Theo's

More than one Gunwalker?

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives allegedly let gun runners walk off with weapons - thousands of them - to see if they'd end up in the hands of the cartels. The Justice Department and ATF have denied it ever happened.

Special Agent John Dodson works in ATF's Phoenix office and has blown the whistle on the controversial strategy, known as letting guns "walk."

Dodson believes there are other ATF operations going on that have done the same thing.

Multiple sources now tell CBS News the questionable tactics were used in more than one operation, and date back as far as 2008 in the Tucson area. One case was called "Wide Receiver."

Sources tell CBS News licensed gun dealers often wanted no part of selling to suspicious characters who could be supplying the cartels.

But, sources say, ATF enlisted the gun dealers as paid Confidential Informants and encouraged them to sell even more.

"ATF has asked me to assist in an official investigation," reads one agreement.
My, my, my, isn't this interesting? We have DOJ and BATFE flat lying about having done this(which never really goes over well with politicians asking questions, especially when people are dead) and now this.

And, along with the other idiocies listed here(why the hell would you send people to work in a country and not be sure to find/train people in the language? Unless you didn't care if they did or didn't want them to actually succeed...), we have this:
The brazen daylight shooting has raised new worries about Mexico's longstanding ban on U.S. agents carrying weapons in most circumstances.

"Ever since Jaime Zapata was killed, the game has changed. They're killing federal agents now," one agent said. "If we got $20 million tomorrow to fully staff every office in Mexico, guys would say, 'We're not going. You won't protect us. The Mexican government won't protect us, and the U.S. government won't let me protect myself.' "
I wonder if Obama even considered that his 'No armed US agents in Mexico' policy might cause this particular problem?

I'd change it slightly

In the end, the difference between a mugger and a Nazi concentration camp commander or communist party commissar is the scale, not the mindset

People like Horwitz cannot be trusted

From Josh Horwitz, ED of the Coalition to Stop Gun Ownership (or more likely his trained puppet Ladd Everitt):

" Following Hurricane Katrina, the NRA promoted a conspiracy theory about mass gun confiscati­ons in Katrina...­"

When this was refuted, CSGV employee 'Grits Jr.' opined:

The NRA had to hire private investigat­ors and located only 75 New Orleans residents (in a city with a pre-Katrin­a population of 450,000) that would claim their guns were confiscate­d.

So 'only' 75 people had their guns illegally confiscated (even though there were hundreds more not found) and the city was found in contempt of court for denying even that.

So what would be a 'mass confiscation' in the mind of a gun control advocate? 100? 200? What would it take for them to consider it to be 'unreasonable'?
These people will lie to you, and then try to say their lie doesn't actually count 'because'.

Ammo recall

PRODUCT WARNING AND RECALL NOTICE


WINCHESTER® RANGER® LAW ENFORCEMENT 223 Remington 64 Grain Power-Point®


3/1/2011


Olin Corporation, through its Winchester Division, is recalling six (6) lots of its RANGER® 223 Remington 64 Grain Power-Point® (PP) centerfire rifle ammunition (Symbol Number RA223R2).


Lot Numbers (last four characters): DK01, DK11, DK21, DK31, DK41, and DK51


Through extensive evaluation Winchester has determined the above lots of RANGER® Law Enforcement ammunition may contain incorrect propellant. Incorrect propellant in this ammunition may cause firearm damage, rendering the firearm inoperable, and subject the shooter or bystanders to a risk of serious personal injury when fired.


DO NOT USE WINCHESTER® RANGER® 223 REMINGTON 64 GRAIN POWER-POINT® AMMUNITION THAT HAS A LOT NUMBER ENDING IN DK01, DK11, DK21, DK31, DK41 or DK51. The ammunition Lot Number is ink stamped inside the right tuck flap of the 20-round carton, as indicated here:


To determine if your ammunition is subject to this notice, review the Lot Number. If the last four characters of the Lot Number are DK01, DK11, DK21, DK31, DK41 or DK51 immediately discontinue use and contact Winchester toll-free at 866-423-5224 to arrange for replacement ammunition and free UPS pick-up of the recalled ammunition.


This notice applies only to RANGER® 223 Remington 64 Grain Power-Point® centerfire rifle ammunition with lot numbers ending in DK01, DK11, DK21, DK31, DK41, and DK51. Other Symbol Numbers or Lot Numbers are not subject to this recall.


If you have any questions concerning this RANGER® Law Enforcement ammunition recall please call toll-free 866-423-5224, write to Winchester (600 Powder Mill Road, East Alton, IL 62024 Attn: RA223R2 Recall), or visit our website at www.winchester.com.


We apologize for this inconvenience.

I added an update to the 'Real Reason' post a couple of days ago

but I think it should be noted in a new post as well. On the possibility of corrupt agents being behind Gunwalker, no. Involved in, possibly, but not behind it. This was set up at high levels involving not just BATFE but DOJ and the State Department, looks like.
"Do you think," he asked me, "that this happened accidentally in a vacuum?" Meaning that one day "Gunwalker Bill" Newell, Phoenix SAC, just got a wild hair and decided to invent his own foreign policy. "Things like this happen because of meetings. People sit in meetings and they decide what they want to happen. And then they take decisions, make policy and implement that policy to achieve those ends." He added, "That's why State is so nervous. They signed off on this. In a meeting."

Gunrunner, I pointed out to him, predated the Obama administration. "Yes, but 'walking guns' didn't." I told him it seemed to me that given the dates on the documents that the meetings crafting this policy must have taken place sometime in mid-2009. "And who took power in January, 2009?" he replied.

I still think empire building by some people is a factor, but only one. Quite possibly the big one:
...Something that fit the meme of "we've got to tighten up on American gunowners, gun stores and gun shows because they are feeding the slaughter." Mexico was perfect. The ATF controlled the reporting of the statistics, the headlines were lurid and if the rest of us gunnies knew that you don't get automatic weapons, hand grenades and RPGs from gun shows and gun stores, most of the American people were too ignorant of the issue to care about the distinction. But the fact was, as the IG report and other sources concluded, the amount of weapons from those legitimate American sources did not meet the allegation. More importantly the statistics didn't meet the policy need. So, how to "fix" that? Project Gunwalker. If there weren't enough semi-auto "assault rifles" in Mexico, the ATF could fix that. And the murders would follow, justifying the policy change of cracking down on "assault rifles," gun shows and the like.

"So," I said, "you're saying that this was a deliberate attempt by policymakers at the highest levels of the Obama administration to subvert the Second Amendment and further diminish the free exercise of firearm rights of honest citizens?"

"You got it. Sucks, huh?" He laughed bitterly.
Unfortunately, entirely possible. Obama has a long history of hostility to the 2nd Amendment, so does Hillary Clinton. And the upper levels of the Democrat party and a lot of their supporters. Combine that with the past actions of a lot of BATFE brass and it's very believable.

If Planned Parenthood has enough money for this,

they don't need any money taken from us in taxes. They do need to be told to go to hell.
The World Association of Girl Scouts and Girl Guides hosted a no-adults-welcome panel at the United Nations this week where Planned Parenthood was allowed to distribute a brochure entitled “Healthy, Happy and Hot.” The event was part of the annual United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) which concludes this week.
...
The brochure also tells students that national laws requiring HIV-positive people to reveal their status to their partner(s) “violate the rights of people living with HIV” and calls for advocacy to “change laws that violate your rights.” It explains, “There are many reasons that people do not share their HIV status. … They may worry that people will find out something else they have kept secret, like they are using injecting drugs, having sex outside of a marriage or having sex with people of the same gender.”
Yeah, because it's no bother for someone you want to screw to not know you have a disease, oh no. And notice the no-adults-welcome bit? It's like they don't want people like parents to know what they're teaching, isn't it?

Ah, those wonderful people at NPR

Later in the lunch, Schiller explains that NPR would be better positioned free of federal funding. “Well frankly, it is clear that we would be better off in the long-run without federal funding,” he says. “The challenge right now is that if we lost it all together we would have a lot of stations go dark.”

When one of O’Keefe’s associates asked, “How confident are you, with all the donors that are available, if they should pull the funding right now that you would survive?,” Schiller answered this way: “Yes, NPR would definitely survive and most of the stations would survive.”

That is precisely the opposite answer Schiller’s boss, NPR CEO Vivian Schiller (no relation), gave at a press conference Monday in Washington. “We take [federal defunding] very, very seriously,” she said. “It would have a profound impact we believe on our ability – of public broadcasting’s ability – to deliver news and information.”
So, which one is lying? I'd bet on Schiller.

At the Café Milano lunch, Schiller said he’s “very proud of” how NPR fired Juan Williams. “What NPR stood for is non-racist, non-bigoted, straightforward telling of the news and our feeling is that if a person expresses his or her opinion, which anyone is entitled to do in a free society, they are compromised as a journalist,” he said. “They can no longer fairly report.”
Why doesn't that include Nina Totenberg?
With that, Schiller once again directly contradicted NPR’s public statements. At her Monday press conference, Vivian Schiller apologized for the way it handled the Williams matter. “We handled the situation badly,” she said. “We acted too hastily and we made some mistakes. I made some mistakes.”

Of course, when you consider what else was being said at this lunch...
On the tapes, Schiller wastes little time before attacking conservatives. The Republican Party, Schiller says, has been “hijacked by this group.” The man posing as Malik finishes the sentence by adding, “the radical, racist, Islamaphobic, Tea Party people.” Schiller agrees and intensifies the criticism, saying that the Tea Party people aren’t “just Islamaphobic, but really xenophobic, I mean basically they are, they believe in sort of white, middle-America gun-toting. I mean, it’s scary. They’re seriously racist, racist people.
So I guess all the blacks and latinos and everything else who come to the tea parties are also racists and bigots, huh?

And we're getting our pockets picked to pay these clowns.

'Cornholing the future'

Courtesy of the ethanol lobbyists and the Obama Administration:
Global Dashboard catches the Obama Administration selectively explaining the causes for increasing world food prices:

“The increase in February mostly reflected further gains in international maize prices, driven by strong demand amid tightening supplies, while prices rose marginally in the case of wheat and fell slightly in the case of rice.”

“In other words, this is mainly about corn. And who’s the biggest corn exporter in the world? The United States…And where is 40% of US corn production going this year? Ethanol, for use in US car engines.”
And let us not forget that the industry- with help from a bunch of clowns in the Administration- wants to up it from 10% to 15% ethanol in fuel; and screw all the engines it'll damage and so forth.

One of the interesting things about OK is the toys

the National Severe Storm Lab gets.
Navy ships originally used AEGIS phased array radar (called SPY-1) technology to protect naval battle groups from missile threats. Researchers believe the same technology has great potential for increasing lead-time for tornado warnings.

In 2000, the U.S. Navy agreed to loan a phased array antenna to NSSL and provided the $10,000,000 in funding to help build the National Weather Radar Testbed (NWRT).
Take a look at the imaging they can get with this setup; it'll look real nice on tv if you can ignore the weather weenie saying something like "Red alert, we're all gonna DIE if you don't get underground!"

I realize I'm late on this latest (possibly NSFW) medical discovery,

but better late than missed:
Staring at female mammary glands is good for a mans' heart health(maybe some women for that matter). Put in less scientific language,
A recent study by German doctors has discovered that staring at a woman’s sweater puppies for ten minutes a day can lower blood pressure and stress on the heart. While this is something many of us have suspected for a long time, it is nice to see a double-boob, er -blind study confirm it.

So, in my ever-present concern for the health of all five or six of you guys(and maybe a lady or two),

So this is what (fG)Britain seems to think of as a good idea

for dealing with electricity needs:
Electricity consumers in the UK will need to get used to flicking the switch and finding the power unavailable, according to Steve Holliday, CEO of National Grid, the country’s grid operator. Because of a six-fold increase in wind generation, which won’t be available when the wind doesn’t blow, “The grid is going to be a very different system in 2020, 2030,” he told BBC’s Radio 4. “We keep thinking that we want it to be there and provide power when we need it. It’s going to be much smarter than that.

“We are going to change our own behaviour and consume it when it is available and available cheaply.”
Translation: The government and/or the greenie dictators will allow you to have electricity when and in the amounts they think you should get it.

Under the so-called “smart grid” that the UK is developing, the government-regulated utility will be able to decide when and where power should be delivered, to ensure that it meets the highest social purpose.
And if it's decided that you can freeze or broil so what some politician deems more 'socially important' gets power, you're screwed.

If Dept. of Homeland Security has the terrorist stuff so in hand

that they have time, money and people to waste on this, then they need their budget cut.

Remember Touching Special Areas searching people at the train station?

Woops.
Amtrak Police Chief John O’Connor said he first thought a blog posting about the incident was a joke. When he discovered that the TSA’s VIPR team did at least some of what the blog said, he was livid. He ordered the VIPR teams off Amtrak property, at least until a firm agreement can be drawn up to prevent the TSA from taking actions that the chief said were illegal and clearly contrary to Amtrak policy.

“When I saw it, I didn’t believe it was real,” O’Connor said. When it developed that the posting on an anti-TSA blog was not a joke, “I hit the ceiling.”
Well, isn't that nice. Does TSA actually care?

O’Connor said the TSA VIPR teams have no right to do more than what Amtrak police do occasionally, which has produced few if any protests and which O’Connor said is clearly within the law and the Constitution. More than a thousand times, Amtrak teams (sometimes including VIPR) have performed security screenings at Amtrak stations. These screenings are only occasional and random, and inspect the bags of only about one in 10 passengers. There is no wanding of passengers and no sterile area. O’Connor said the TSA violated every one of these rules.
And he's surprised?
A posting in late February to the Transportation Security Administration’s blog, which serves as a public relations tool of the TSA, tried to explain why TSA agents took over the Amtrak station in Savannah. But O’Connor said the “facts” as posted on the TSA blog were incorrect. He said the blog indicated that Amtrak had approved of the operation, but it had not. He called the TSA’s posting on blog.tsa.gov “inaccurate and insensitive.” As of the time this story was filed, the same posting remained on the blog.
What? TSA lied? Again, is he surprised?

All this is bad enough. It gets even better:
The group involved is TSA’s VIPR operation, which deals with surface transportation. VIPR is short for “visible intermodal protection and response.” It turns out that VIPR has been far more active than imagined. Teams have searched bus passengers all over the country, have done similar things at train stations, and have even blocked traffic on bridges to search trucks and cars. That even included the busy Chesapeake Bay Bridge near Washington.
Napolitano's power-grab is really spreading; seems she wasn't just talking about searching people all over, she was getting it rolling. Can you imagine the idiocy of blocking a frigging bridge so you can search vehicles?
A: Unless you have some reason to think it's actually no-shit necessary to find something really bad, it's stupid.
B: If you think bad guys have, say, a bomb on a truck, you've just given them a bridge full of stalled vehicles to take down
And when does the head of TSA inform us that driving across a bridge or taking a bus is a privilege for which we give up our rights?

I appears the Federal LEO Assoc. isn't happy

with Obama's statements the other day.
Contrary to what President Obama asserted, all law enforcement officers assigned to Mexico do perform “law enforcement activities.” This may include conducting field interviews, responding to crime scenes, overseeing training and participating in raids. The fact that they don’t actually handcuff suspects doesn’t diminish their role or the risks they face.
And on the 'can't be armed' stuff,
On Friday, FLEOA met with Chairman Michael McCaul’s staff from the House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee. FLEOA requested that the committee hold hearings in order to demand accountability for why the U.S. government sends unarmed law enforcement officers into hostile, crime-ridden foreign countries. FLEOA also respectfully requested that Congress halt all funding that is used by U.S. agencies to send unarmed law enforcement officers to unstable foreign countries.

"The Real Reason the ATF Smuggled Guns (updated)

into Mexico" over at TTaG. He's got three possibles:
1. To catch the “big fish”: he doubts, and gives reasons why.
2. Empire building: again, doubts and the reasons why.
3. ATF Agents enabled smuggled guns to line their own pockets: likely, he thinks:
As in Watergate, the key to this scandal is to “follow the money.” Never mind the guns themselves—even though drug thugs used the to murder two federal agents. Who paid for the ATF-enabled smuggled guns? How much did they cost? How were the smugglers/informants paid, and how much were they paid? How much did the smugglers get for the guns and what happened to that money?

Occam’s Razor says that if you’re forced to choose between competing theories explaining a given event, the simplest explanation is the most likely to be true. I vote for door number three. The ATF didn’t “botch” Project Gunrunner or Operation Fast and Furious.

I reckon they started out setting up straw purchases, and then “forgot” to stop the guns before they crossed the border. They subverted the normal rules of a police sting—NEVER LOSE TRACK OF THE DRUGS/MONEY/GUNS—for cash money.
If I had to guess, #2 and #3 are the big ones, with #1 being the excuse. Reading this brought something into focus I'd wondered about, and that was just exactly what BATFE could expect to gain toward 'getting the bosses' with this: bosses don't deal in stuff like this, subordinates do. And all that nice noise about 'wanting to take down a cartel' doesn't wash, either. Unless as part of the empire-building action: ATF isn't supposed to be doing that, it's not their job. But if they get expanded(lots more agents and money and authority involved there) it could be. Being legally expanded would require real changes in their charter, etc., but if they decided to expand out without worrying about those niceties(counting on some of the Congressional cover that's helped them out before)...


With Mexico finally deciding to start asking questions about Gunwalker, things stand to get really messy, which is actually a good thing: it's going to take it getting monumentally nasty to actually get the truth out AND have any real possibility of those responsible being punished for their actions. At least any punishment more nasty than "You were a bad boy, go to your room; and your next pay raise will be delayed."

On the latter, couple of days ago Sipsey Street had a piece saying good things about John Dodson, the ATF agent who came out into the open to put a line from the compressor on that whistle; Vanderboegh is catching some crap for it. Well, bullshit. Dodson has said some things about the 'why' that I don't care for, and may well have done things in the past I'd not like; neither of which changes the fact that he's put his balls in the vise here and is hoping Grassley and a real investigation can keep the BATFE brass from closing it. And respect is owed to the other honest cops at ATF who've been trying to get something done but whose names we don't know; considering the reputation this agency has for screwing people over they're taking real risks, too, from the miserable excuses for lawmen running that agency


Update: ref the reason #3, I fear I wasn't thinking it through all the way; yes, there could well be some corrupt agents involved getting money, but as Vanderboegh points out this was set up and approved by DOJ and the bigshots in BATFE; while there's the possibility of someone spreading some money around to influence things I don't think it explains Gunwalker. I'll have to go with #2 combined with something else:
Gunrunner, I pointed out to him, predated the Obama administration. "Yes, but 'walking guns' didn't." I told him it seemed to me that given the dates on the documents that the meetings crafting this policy must have taken place sometime in mid-2009. "And who took power in January, 2009?" he replied.
...
...The ATF controlled the reporting of the statistics, the headlines were lurid and if the rest of us gunnies knew that you don't get automatic weapons, hand grenades and RPGs from gun shows and gun stores, most of the American people were too ignorant of the issue to care about the distinction. But the fact was, as the IG report and other sources concluded, the amount of weapons from those legitimate American sources did not meet the allegation. More importantly the statistics didn't meet the policy need. So, how to "fix" that? Project Gunwalker. If there weren't enough semi-auto "assault rifles" in Mexico, the ATF could fix that. And the murders would follow, justifying the policy change of cracking down on "assault rifles," gun shows and the like.

"So," I said, "you're saying that this was a deliberate attempt by policymakers at the highest levels of the Obama administration to subvert the Second Amendment and further diminish the free exercise of firearm rights of honest citizens?"

"You got it. Sucks, huh?" He laughed bitterly.
And, unfortunately, entirely possible.

Ah, those wonderful people at TSA: they want to irrardiate

people everywhere:
Newly uncovered documents show that as early as 2006, the Department of Homeland Security has been planning pilot programs to deploy mobile scanning units that can be set up at public events and in train stations, along with mobile x-ray vans capable of scanning pedestrians on city streets.
Isn't that a wonderful thought?

Ah, but they deny it. Kind of.
A TSA official responds in a statement that the “TSA has not tested the advanced imaging technology that is currently used at airports in mass transit environments and does not have plans to do so.”
I have to say, I'm an amateur at this but I could drive a truck through the loopholes in that statement: 'has not' doesn't mean isn't or won't, 'does not' leaves in 'can change our minds at any time'(or did). Etc.

Just imagine, they want to feel you up or dose you with possibly damaging radiation(have they YET released the safety studies on this crap?) before they'll allow you to get on a bus. Or train. Or subway. Or into the mall, or game, or anywhere else they can get away with it, all for 'public safety'.

Found at the Advice Goddess

Further demonstration of why I'd never live in the People's Republic of MA

And there you were, thinking that micro-stamping was the be-all, end-all of the government’s attempts to keep track of personal firearms. Nope. It’s micro-tracking. The latest affront to gun rights and privacy is on the table, again, courtesy of the Big Brothers in the Bay State. State Senator Andrew Petruccelli has re-introduced a bill calling for a commission to study GPS tracking for firearms. I’ve belled the Senator’s office. No joy. He might call back. He might not. The text of the bill reads as follows . . .
Yes, those merry socialist bastards aren't satisfied with pushing microstamping, oh no, they want a friggin' chip on your gun so they can track it.

Wonder how long before they want all gun owners chipped?